IDEA: Remove Massacre Missions

Since they are nerfing the stack size to 3, player groups who dedicated their existence to hunting CZ systems and promoting war are disbanding because the CZ profession is coming to an end, likely to be replaced by bounty hunting or nothing at all.

Aside from systems like 17D and Quince, finding suitable places that support this career path was difficult enough. Now there seems to be no point. I urge FD to amend this with a reasonable fix that also continues to solve the annoyance of mode swapping:

  • Remove Massacre missions entirely
  • Reduce skill rating of ships found in low intensity zones - est. 4m/hr Edit: or 4x for 16m/hr
  • Increase payout on vouchers from ships in high intensity zones by 4x - est. 16m/hr EDIT: 8x at 32m might be more reasonable.
  • Build a new zone type, maybe called elite intensity, that contains ships of elite difficulty, heavier ship types, and builds that contain more engineered mods. Ships in this zone would have 16x payout rates -est 64m/hr
  • All vouchers turned in to factions that represent super powers will grant rank progress based on a rate corresponding with their credit value

Fair enough? It's not 17D level money of 150m/hr, has the potential to add a lot more difficulty and challenge to meet 64m (challenge that the game never had to begin with), avoids mission board frustrations entirely and allows player groups to perform their career choice anywhere they want. It would also be great for multicrew.

I also added a discussion to Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/60qk7w/idea_remove_massacre_missions/
 
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Or just accept that the current situation allows people to gain rank/rep/credits roughly 5 times faster than FDev ever intended and that you will now be taking 5 times longer to do those things.

I took my first Imperial Navy mission last Friday night.
I went to Harm to buy my Cutter on Sunday afternoon.
I'm pretty sure that's not how FDev intended it should work.
 
I think a lot of us want a new CZ type. People thought that CZ's were placeholders because they were just endless waves of ships in empty space.

Building CZ's around installations, bases, etc would be nice. So would dynamic objectives, like killing fleeing, high value ships.

But the massacre missions were always going to get a nerf. Stacking twenty missions that way wasn't going to last.
 
I'm not really worried about exact cr/hr numbers. But I do like the idea of dropping massacre missions and allowing combat bonds to be the focus of earning money as a mercenary.
 
Or just accept that the current situation allows people to gain rank/rep/credits roughly 5 times faster than FDev ever intended and that you will now be taking 5 times longer to do those things.

I took my first Imperial Navy mission last Friday night.
I went to Harm to buy my Cutter on Sunday afternoon.
I'm pretty sure that's not how FDev intended it should work.

I don't have to accept anything because I'm already maxed and rich af. My concerns are for those who haven't gotten there yet and the communities that formed to fight them cooperatively, not to provide easy access to progression. If you had thought about it at all, you would have realized I just suggested a major payout nerf to the current CZ. I just want the profession to be both viable and challenging.

16m/hr in a high intensity combat zone per my suggestion on vouchers alone is not a lot, maybe not even enough. I'm sure if people can currently find missions to stack capped at 3, they should be able to make more than that. 3x 17 mill missions done in an hour is 51m plus the 4m from vouchers. That's a lot more than 16m from vouchers alone.

I'm just saying they are capable of offering something significantly more difficult that pays a little beyond what they are currently offering. It would also help highlight their multicrew feature.

If they intended 55 mil/hr, then I would think I'm on the same page with them.
 
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I think massacre missions have a place in the game, just not in their current incarnation. Currently they literally just pay you a bonus for a standard money making activity, meaning that either CZs provide balanced income without them (creating broken incomes when combined with the missions or CZs become a waste of time without them.

I still think that they shouldn't just be "destroy X ships", but should instead specify particular types/categories/ranks of ships to encourage the player to actually go out of their way to hunt down the required targets. Rather than destroy 30 ships, it might be destroy 3 elite ranked ships for example. Such a system could also generate named NPCs for you to fight against in certain CZs, such as having to take down a notable Federal captain in his highly specced Corvette who typically appears in a certain CZ.
 
Mission stacking makes no sense whether you have 20 or 3 missions. They need to identify the root cause of the problem. If the vouchers were treated like a commodity then you could turn them in on missions just like how mining missions work. But I think that also they shouldn't be target based, but value based. A cutter should count more than an eagle.
 
Everyone stay calm... no need to invent anything to replace the mission hack. FD knows what they are doing and everything will be just fine. So, move along nothing to see here... move along and play the game.
 

Deleted member 115407

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Mission stacking makes no sense whether you have 20 or 3 missions. They need to identify the root cause of the problem. If the vouchers were treated like a commodity then you could turn them in on missions just like how mining missions work. But I think that also they shouldn't be target based, but value based. A cutter should count more than an eagle.

Very much this. As much as I love this game, the mechanic in question (two birds with one stone) was poorly implemented and should be fixed at the root. One kill should equal one mission result. Limiting players to three missions is just covering up the problem.

As for scans.... I guess each mission in a given system should spawn its own search area.
 
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Having recently done a ton of CZs to unlock Col Decker, I would have welcomed some of these, but didn't see any at all.
 
Since they are nerfing the stack size to 3, player groups who dedicated their existence to hunting CZ systems and promoting war are disbanding because the CZ profession is coming to an end, likely to be replaced by bounty hunting or nothing at all.

Aside from systems like 17D and Quince, finding suitable places that support this career path was difficult enough. Now there seems to be no point. I urge FD to amend this with a reasonable fix that also continues to solve the annoyance of mode swapping:

  • Remove Massacre missions entirely
  • Reduce skill rating of ships found in low intensity zones - est. 4m/hr
  • Increase payout on vouchers from ships in high intensity zones by 4x - est. 16m/hr
  • Build a new zone type, maybe called elite intensity, that contains ships of elite difficulty, heavier ship types, and builds that contain more engineered mods. Ships in this zone would have 16x payout rates -est 64m/hr
  • All vouchers turned in to factions that represent super powers will grant rank progress based on a rate corresponding with their credit value

Fair enough? It's not 17D level money of 150m/hr, has the potential to add a lot more difficulty and challenge to meet 64m (challenge that the game never had to begin with), avoids mission board frustrations entirely and allows player groups to perform their career choice anywhere they want. It would also be great for multicrew.

I also added a discussion to Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/EliteDangerous/comments/60qk7w/idea_remove_massacre_missions/

Yeah. Massacre missions don't need to exist. Just going to a CZ and killing ships is the same thing as doing a massacre mission anyway. The only reason for them is that CZs by themselves have the worst risk/time/reward ratio in the game. Dump massacre missions altogether and make CZs viable all on their own instead.
 
Did you really gain that much? I've got the same engineer unlocked, but I've hardly used them. I think I've used them on my Eagle...

Didn't gain squat. Just like I don't plan to gain squat from unlocking Tiana Fortune, but it's something to do. After that, the only one I have left to unlock is Jameson, but I'm not Elite, and probably won't be for awhile (about 10% Deadly). However, thay are adding new engineer recipes next patch, so I'll be ready.
 
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Didn't gain squat. Just like I don't plan to gain squat from unlocking Tiana Fortune, but it's something to do. After that, the only one I have left to unlock is Jameson, but I'm not Elite, and probably won't be for awhile (about 10% Deadly). However, thay are adding new engineer recipes next patch, so I'll be ready.

Heh, the new recipes made me gain some Rep with the Empire.

But the main focus of this thread was income from massacre missions.
 
They need to identify the root cause of the problem.

You're going to love this, here it comes:


The Root Cause of The Problem is:

only-child-problems-sharing-main-300x213.jpg


Yep, it's not the game, it's the players. People don't want to spend six months or six years slaving away to make hundreds of millions of credits to buy a ship, nor just as long or longer to outfit it. By the time most have earned enough to move from a sidewinder to an Adder, they've put just about all the effort into "working" as they can stand. And that's only partially their own fault. The rest of the fault lies with their parents, who never taught them the value of hard work, nor patience, nor took a strap to their rears when they acted like little Veruca above, and some of those folks even have produced offspring of their own. May the gods have mercy on us all.
 
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I want it now is a silly argument.

You go and buy a new car.
Salesman says come back and pick it up in March 2075
You reply, March 2075? I'll be dead by then
Salesman say "you want everything now do you"
 
I want it now is a silly argument.

You go and buy a new car.
Salesman says come back and pick it up in March 2075
You reply, March 2075? I'll be dead by then
Salesman say "you want everything now do you"

So close.. thanks for playing. Let's try it this way:

I go to buy a new car. I want the 2017 Aston Martin DB11.
I also want the kickplate on driver's side to read "His" and the kickplate on the passenger side to read "Hers"
And I want the floormats in a zebra pattern lambswool.
The seats I want in a light mocha suede.
The steering wheel I want of polished cypress wood.
The panels and trim I also want in polished cypress.
I want the 7-spoke anodized aluminum rims with the chariot-spike center cap.
I want the headlights in 7800 degree halogen.
And I want the headliner in a mocha panné to match the seats.

Can they do it? Of course they can.

But I'm standing here with 40% in cash, ready to put down, my checkbook in my vest pocket, and I want to drive it home today.

It's not going to happen.

Not so silly an argument now, is it?
 
No need to remove the missions, as they do play a role in the BGS as well for those that aren't just doing what ever the flavour of the month is
I do like the item of the Elite level CZs

And the other suggestions in the threat of CZs locations around installations or above bases, and mbpaybe sub objectives in CZs since the distress USSes do have pirate waves
 
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